A former Kentucky Poet Laureate has died after an 18 month long battle with cancer. Jane Gentry Vance passed away this week.
Dr. Jane Gentry Vance's first poem began with the words "The very first Christmas long, long, ago took place in a manger where the cattle did low."
Gentry Vance wrote those words when she was in the second grade. Decades later, in 2007, she would be named Kentucky's Poet Laureate.
In 2013 Gentry Vance read her poem "Night Beasts in the Backyard" to a packed house at the Kentucky Writers' Day Ceremony.
Gentry Vance was a professor in UK's Honor program and was awarded the UK Alumni Association's Great Teacher Award.
She was also the recipient of numerous fellowships, including one from the Kentucky Arts Council
